


The Reckoning

by ElizaHiggs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Canon Compliant, F/M, I am apparently alone with the Pottermore-compliant-fics, POV Tonks, Pottermore Compliant, Rated M for possible part two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 00:04:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11543250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElizaHiggs/pseuds/ElizaHiggs
Summary: She finds him out on the grounds, smoking a fag and watching the day breaking over the trees that mark the far limits of the inky lake. | Post-hospital-wing scene | POV Tonks





	The Reckoning

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve never read a post hospital wing fic that seemed plausible in light of Lupin’s unhappy behavior and attitude for so much of DH—but most of my favorite fics posit a romantic relationship before the end of HBP anyway. This is my canon- and Pottermore-compliant shot at it. I think there’s a part two to this, if you like it. 
> 
> I'm feeling pretty iffy about the quality of this one—it's a sort of brain dump, and my editing muscle is subpar right now. Comments and feedback appreciated as always. 
> 
> I own none of these characters.

She finds him out on the grounds, smoking a fag and watching the day breaking over the trees that mark the far limits of the inky lake. Keeping vigil with him is his Patronus, a corporeal wolf: the silver light she’s spotted from across the darkness of the now-quiet lawn. She sends her own Patronus out to meet them and it runs ahead for its mate, and wolf and werewolf tap noses in the affectionately interested way that dogs do. The man glances down at the paired Patronuses as she joins them. His hair has grown out in the time he’s been underground, longer than he usually keeps it, so that the bangs fall into his eyes and she cannot read his face for the tangled grey-brown mat. When he does look up at her, his eyes are like ice. 

“I can give you nothing.” His voice is raspy with shouting and tobacco, and bitter with restraint, and she wants to cry for him, give him some of the release he won’t allow himself. “I have nothing.”

“All I want is you.”

He lets out a small _huff_ of breath that might pass for a chuckle, but it’s mirthless and sardonic and fooling no one, least of all her. The Patronuses disappear. “I haven’t even that one night in twenty-nine.” He looks down at the glowing fag hanging from his fingertips and smiles wryly. For all his wild appearance, he has never reminded her less of a wolf, and suddenly it’s unbearable: his utter detachment, as if his life or hers or Dumbledore’s can’t possibly matter, and then—because she can’t hold back anymore, and because she hasn’t allowed herself any relief either—the tears slip silently down her cheeks, for Dumbledore and for him and for herself. 

His jaw tightens, but he lets her cry and finishes the fag, breathing smoke in soft billows into the cool air. She’s only seen him smoke after an encounter with Death Eaters—cigarettes are a Muggle vice, and expensive—and it smells to her like death. When it's nearly gone, he Vanishes the butt with a flick of his fingers and reaches into the front of his robes. She thinks that he is reaching for a handkerchief, or the pack of cigarettes, but he withdraws his wand and twirls it between his fingers. 

“I should send you back up to the castle.”

Her skin crawls as she watches him contemplate the wand in his hands. They had escorted the children back up to their dormitories after Harry had related how Snape killed Dumbledore; several of the younger ones, awoken by the noise of the battle and huddled together in the Gryffindor common room, had shied back from him. She realizes that she doesn’t know what _this_ man, so unlike her gentle Patronus, is capable of. Her fingers twitch for her own wand.

She takes a shaky breath. “I—I can be content with friendship. If only you’ll talk to me again.” 

“Oh, no,” he says. He reaches abruptly for her, and she flinches, but he puts both hands around her neck and cups her jawline. He plants a kiss to her right temple, then rests his cheek there. His breath is warm next to her ear: “No, Nymphadora. You see, I tried to content myself with friendship for a year, and failed; and then I tried to forget you for another, and could not.” 

She lifts her face and reaches out to take hold of his robes, but he disentangles himself from her and resumes his steady vigilance over the grounds. The wind kicks up from the far side of the lake, drying the tear tracks onto her cheeks. “Do you love me?”

He laughs aloud this time, and the sound goes ringing out across the water, clear and chilly and awful. “I know you’re cleverer than that, Nymphadora.” He stows his wand and turns to face her, empty hands spread wide. “I am yours. I’ve _been_ yours—a month after we met I tore my heart from my chest and laid it at your feet, and abandoned it there; and now you say you _want me_.”

The old anger flares within her like a firecracker. “Then why—”

“Because I can’t _take_ what I have no right to.” His hands disappear into the pockets of his trousers and he bows his head, eyes fixed on the dusty toes of his boots, but the sudden submissiveness—which is a lie, a manipulation, a horrible simulacra of the gentle Remus she knew—does nothing to assuage her anger.

“So—what then?” Her voice breaks at the rise on the question. “You’ll just—let me languish? Walk to your own death?”

He looks askance at her, lips parted like he might argue with her, but then apparently thinks better of it and closes his mouth. His eyes are softer as he tilts his head back and examines the sliver of moon still hanging in the brightening sky. “No,” he says. “No, I know what I want.” He pauses and looks at her, and she sees the grim resignation in his face. “Even if it costs you the chance to move on.”

“Which I won’t.”

“You can’t know that, Nymphadora—”

“Don’t call me Nymphadora!” She’s pulled her wand and aimed it at his heart before she knows what she’s doing, and sparks fly from the tip. 

He eyes her wand warily, but he makes no move to defend himself. “I said that I have nothing to give you.”

“And I said that I don’t care—”

“I do have one thing.” He reaches into his robes again and removes a slim Muggle-style wallet, the kind with folds for slips of paper, brown leather creased with age. Her wand arm falls to her side. In his palm he cradles two rings, one large and plain and yellow, the other white, intricate, floral. “My parents’. I couldn’t bear to sell them.” 

He grabs clumsily for her left hand and she holds it up for him as he slips the small ring onto her third finger. The delicate veins of silver shrink to wrap about her flesh.

“My mother’s.” He brings her hand to his mouth with both of his own, and kisses the place where the ring sits on her finger. The metal gleams in the darkness, perfectly untarnished. _Goblin-made_ , she thinks. 

“You want to marry me?”

“I—” He shakes his head a little, like he’s about to deny it, and then he says: “Have I misunderstood you?”

“No—no.” She grabs again for the lapels of his robes, and his hands come up to cover hers. “I want to marry you.”

He lets her make the first move, though. She moves into his arms with a sense of unreality, of disbelief, of—of foreboding—and when his arms go round her she lifts her face to his. His lips move under hers, chapped and smoky and warm, and then he parts them and touches his tongue to her bottom lip. She feels the moisture like fire and opens her mouth for more of it. For a moment, he hesitates, and then his tongue slips into her mouth: a teenager’s experimentation with a grown werewolf’s control. When she lifts her tongue to meet his, she has only a moment to marvel at the coolness of the sensation before he groans softly and pulls away. 

But he doesn’t go far, and he rests his forehead against hers, eyes closed. Her right hand, still clutching her wand, is pressed against his chest and she can feel his heart racing beneath her wrist as if they’ve only just left the battle. When he opens his eyes, they’re warm, the grey irises shot through with gold and dilated with desire—a wolfish look, they call it. “I do love you,” he says, and the tears run down her cheeks afresh. 

He lets her go and she sniffs, wiping at her eyes with the sleeve of her robes. The rising sun reminds her of the time and place. “C’mon.” She stows her wand and takes his hand. “We need to sleep.”


End file.
